Lawn Mower 101 June 2011

The first mowing of spring was actually done by my husband a few weeks ago. Let's get something straight though, it took him several hours and several distractions to actually get anything like the lawn mowed down. And he only did "the edges." By the edges I mean he didn't move any lawn furniture and he didn't mow the front yard. So we had that white trash look in our back yard, where there are big swathes of lawn mowed down with the lawn furniture engulfed in two foot long grass. So I set out to fix it last weekend, but when I tried to start the mower, the cord would not pull out all the way. Of course, I didn't find that out until I was in mid yank, at which point the cord wrenched out of my hand and yanked my arm out of its socket (not really, but it hurt anyway). So not learning my lesson, I tried it several more times, with the same result each time (you'd think I'd have learned more quickly). My husband was at work at the time, so I just gave up after my hand was stinging and my arm was aching. Now my husband has a bad tendency to suggest all sorts of asinine possibilities for why the lawn mower won't work. His favorite one and the one that will push my temper over the edge is that the gas cap is too tight. And even though it's never turned out that the lawn mower's gas cap was too tight, it buys him a few more days of ignoring the problem. So when I told him about the lawn mower not starting, he began slip into his old excuse before he admitted to hitting a stump and stopping the mower cold. He decided he probably broke some thingamajig that the mower needs to keep the timing in sync, therefore causing the cord to be wrenched out of my hand. On the way home from work the following day, he stopped and picked up the thingamajig and came home and fixed the mower. When I went out to mow the lawn the next day, it started better than it's ever started. I was most of the way through the back lawn and it just petered out. I started it several more times and eventually it started working again. I finished the back lawn and moved the mower to the front. I left the mower on the sidewalk and went around to the back again to get a drink of water and I got distracted pulling weeds from a planter. When I returned to the lawn mower, it had dumped about a 1/4 cup of oil onto the sidewalk and it wouldn't stay running. My husband pulled into the driveway about then and I showed him the oil and explained to him how it wouldn't stay running. He asked me if the gas cap was too tight. Fortunately, before I throttled him, he decided dumping oil probably wasn't a good thing and tipped it over to look at it. We made a trip to the lawn mower repair to pick their brains and they told my husband it could just be the seal and how to check it. So he checked it, found the seal in perfect condition, but he also found a crack in the casing. We went back to the lawn mower repair and they said it would be cheaper to buy a new lawn mower. So now we own a new lawn mower. I think I will save the gas cap from our broken mower and give it to my husband for Father's Day, just for old time's sake.